You know, I come out of the door of the tower and there in the light snow is, light snow falling is, the shoe so in her hat. And Christian unhatted as the Jisha. And Matt's ringing the bell. I find it all kind of comical. It makes me laugh. At the same time, You know, it makes me laugh because it's like something big is going to happen. There's some anticipation. Like a music movie score. And yet, it really means, I mean, take the anticipation away, really means we're just doing this together. But not just together with each other, but together with our ancestors. And this is, you know, the robes, the zendo,

[01:01]

teaching staffs I've inherited, back scratchers originally, you know. The back scratchers I've inherited. This room. And a hundred thousand million Kalpas, oh my goodness. Sounds like a long time. Anyway, we're in the midst of doing something together. that has been done together a long time and we're somehow three vows and over in the midst of that tradition and that tradition is part of whatever we're doing, whatever I'm saying, whatever we're saying. Yeah. So I find it both comical sort of and wonderful. Now, basically the topic has been, and particularly today, is the experience of interdependence.

[02:15]

Is it possible to experience interdependence? We can know about it, we can think about it, and we can accumulate experience of seeing things, knowing things as activities. And this practice of knowing things as activities is something we should really develop and really notice when we think of things as entities or not just as entities but as parts of a whole subsumed within a whole. In other words, like a story, all the parts are understood through the story, or all the parts understood through an implied whole that they make. That's the same thing as permanence. It's basically the same as thinking of things as permanent.

[03:20]

Because consciousness is always attempting to find, to look for, to engender even, unity or a predictable relatedness, etc. And as I say, no matter how subtly we look at the functions of consciousness and see to the extent to which they have a degree of delusion in them, still we have to function that way. So Buddhism requires us to step out of our habits and to step out of a bit simply the way consciousness functions. This is, actually it's fairly easy to understand.

[04:24]

And it's even fairly easy to make certain steps in that direction, steps backwards or a little bit out of context. But really how to step then forward into interdependence as an activity, this is not so easy. But it starts with, you know, you've got to start with understanding that everything's interdependent, changing, etc. And then you've got to find an entry, traditional Buddhism, and the entry, I keep talking to you, there's lots of entries. The entry I just mentioned is to develop the habit of seeing each thing as an activity, and I would suggest you I do what I call in my mind the tree riff. Go from the tree as an entity to treeing as an activity and run through the whole thing until you really feel the presence of a tree and until you feel presence is your first experience of the tree.

[05:40]

Now that's just de rigueur. That's just sort of required basics. It's not, you know, if you're going to get to actually being in the midst of interdependence. Now, sometimes it can just... will happen through continuous practice, as it did with Ejo, as I would understand. Dogen said it's a simple situation. One hair pierces myriad holes. Ejo heard this. And because of this, Ejo decided to stay with Dogen. And a lot of Dogen's disciples came from other schools and so forth, and they said, because he was an unusual and good teacher. But really, that's a good reason to practice with someone, to find a teacher.

[06:50]

But more basically, whether you find a good teacher at all, the more fundamental decision is Buddhism is the way the world functions. maybe not the trappings of Buddhism, but the understanding of Buddhism is how the world functions. And if we can do anything in this, I don't know, often I feel miserable world, or misery for a very large percentage of the world's population, at least we can function within how the world exists, actually exists. Without that, there's no hope. At least that's a tiny hope. Tiny hope pierces myriad holes. Yeah, so let's say that A. Joe stayed because Dogen was a good teacher, but let's also say A. Joe stayed because he saw this is the way one is best to exist in this world.

[07:58]

So, in this continuous practice, he put out his Ryoki bowls at some point, and he had an enlightenment experience. And he went to Dogen and bowed three times. It's a custom, such circumstances, in Dogen's room. And Dogen said, knowing the custom, what have you understood? And he just said, I don't ask about... single hair, but what are myriad holes? Now myriad holes are a way of experiencing interdependence. So through this phrase which stuck in, stuck within him and began to incubate and function through continuous practice, he had an enlightened experience. That phrase worked within his own views.

[09:03]

And he didn't stay away from it. He actually stayed with Dogen as his attendant for 20 years. And Dogen said to him once, although you're older than I am, Egil, you will for many years help many persons practice. So, Egil had the experience of being the single hair. Who knows what the same myriad holes are? How you could possibly find language for it? But he can act it, and he acted it by going, enacted it by going to Dogen's room, bowing. That's all sort of enacting. the myriad holes. And so Dogen, when he said, when Egil said, I don't ask about the single hair, a single hair, but what are myriad holes, Dogen said, pierced.

[10:14]

So how do we talk about acting within interdependence? inter-independence. So we can start with the presence of words. We have to start somewhere and I have to kind of, you know, my material is words, twigs. And so I like the example, when people talk about the sense of a word rather than the meaning of a word, of, you know, I've mentioned it before, that the evening star and the morning star are both Venus. But you can't say the evening star is the morning star. The sense of the evening star is different from the sense of the morning star. Or even though they're both Venus, you can't say they're the same. The experience, the sense, the extension of the evening star is different from the sense, the presence, the presence of the morning star.

[11:37]

And, you know, I can say math has a certain presence. And I can actually notice that I feel a number of senses of or presences of Matt. That's my way of knowing Matt. And that's all your way of knowing Matt or each other. And then there's all of your senses of Matt. Sorry to use you as the Matt, Matt. and then there's Matt's own sense of himself as a morning star or evening star or no longer a star or whatever and then there's so there's my manifold sense of Matt

[12:47]

There's all of your senses of Matt. There's Matt's sense of himself, and there's the simple physical presence of Matt in the morning, in the evening, and so forth. Now, we all know that. I mean, we all function more or less that way, but I don't know if we acknowledge it as fully as we might. Could, should, perhaps. And we could say the same for Ingrid. Each of us has a different sense of Ingrid. And all the senses of Ingrid, or of our Shusso, Nicole, all the senses, can we stay within all the senses of a person? And the con... I say sometimes like nonsense, consense. The consense, which is the context, the sense of the context, including all the senses.

[13:50]

This is a word I just made up. Look at, let's take this room. Okay. If I look at this room as its walls, I have one feeling. If I look at this room from the corners, from its angles, I have a different feeling. If I feel the room from its angles, there's a kind of energy that comes from the angles. And an openness, even within the room. But if I sense the walls of the room, I feel enclosed. That's one reason I put the slate tiles like diamonds instead of like squares.

[14:53]

And the room ideally should be designed from the point of the experience of its angles as well as its walls. And then there's the room in Zazen. You know, when I'm sitting and for some reason I open my eyes or from half closed or mostly closed to open or from closed to open, the room appears. But I've already sensed, I have a sense of the room and the sense of the room is sort of folded within my experience. which it's a different sense than sitting outside. That's sometimes why in Sushin people go out and sit for night sitting on the deck. And that's one of the reasons that today I just experimented for the first time in many years, maybe, yeah, forever.

[16:00]

I kind of felt through this topic in the tower room instead of in the hotawan room. because for me usually where I feel something through produces a different lecture so this lecture is bringing the feeling of the tower room and where I'm writing almost all the time well usually I Before Tesho I'm in Hotawan where I can light incense, chant the name of the ancestors, so forth, in a different way. Yeah, so I'm doing zazen if I, again, there's some noise or some reason I open my eyes.

[17:00]

Sometimes there's a kind of jarring. The sense of the room I have is rather different than the feel of the room. Sometimes the feel of the room is less... less... less... than the feel of the physically articulated room. The feel of the physically articulated room is less real than the feel of the room I have in zazen. Like the morning star or the evening star. At different times in zazen, different periods of zazen, different days of zazen, I found a different room. Different sense of the room that I'm sitting in and the sense of the room is different when there's... Even one person can leave to go to make breakfast and the sense of the room changes.

[18:07]

Which is the real room? Now this is not a silly question. Sacred, you know, means dedicated to a single purpose. The Zendo is dedicated to the single purpose of doing Zaza. But does the dedication to a single purpose open it up to a manifold, subtle body sense? If I go into a cathedral, which... quite possible, quite often in Europe, wonderful cathedrals, chapels, and so forth. Some of them really have a subtle body sense that's, and actually there's a whole secret masonry society which built these cathedrals on the chakras, and it was kept secret.

[19:11]

So it's really an intentional subtle body sense. And you go into a cathedral, of the various styles some of them immediately bring you into with their dedication to a single purpose bring you into a subtle body sense that isn't just one body sense one day it's one thing one day it's another even in the same day sitting for twenty minutes or an hour silently kneeling or sitting different kinds of subtle body senses appear within a space dedicated to a single purpose. A single hair. So what is the real room? Is it the one in the blueprints? Or is it, they didn't have blueprints, but you know, like that, but is it the one in the drawings?

[20:17]

Or is it one that drawings are supposed to induce? I'm trying to get us to acknowledge, allow that the presence, the manifold variegated presence may be more real than the source of the presence, the physically articulated room, or the particular person or even the word Morning Star Now the material I always say that Zen practice is a craft. What is the material of the craft? For a potter the material is the clay and And the wheel, one time pots were made just on the table.

[21:23]

At some point, somebody thought up the wheel, it changed pottery. So the wheel and the clay is the material. For a cellist, it's the horse hair, Siberian horses, I've heard, horse hair and steel strings in the belly or body of the cello. That's the material. But, you know, I did the, many years ago, many years ago, 61 or 2 or 3 or something like that, I organized, helped organize the Pablo Casals Masterclass. Pablo Casals was great. He was an inspiration, a Catalonian, and dedicated his life to peace primarily, but peace that he felt he could achieve through music, which is the only thing he knew how to do totally well.

[22:24]

So he thought his music, which was not national boundaries, not limited to national boundaries, etc., was his way of expressing peace. what was more important to him as a human being than the music, he says, peace. But in this masterclass with these cellists who'd been picked from all over the world to study with him for a couple of weeks, he at one point said, hear the single note. So for the, I think, the potter or the cellist or whomever, craftsperson, well, the material may be the clay, but the material is actually the experience of the clay.

[23:27]

The experience of the horsehair on the steel strings. So the medium of the craft is the direct experience of experience. The direct experience of experience. So our craft is the direct experience of experience. All of practice has no meaning unless it's experienceable. How do you bring yourself into the experienceable? the direct experience of experience, not discursive thinking. The direct experience of experience is rupadhatu, the form realm, the direct experience of experience. An antidote to the kamadhatu, the desire realm, or the realm in which we follow our senses,

[24:35]

sensorially defined world, rather than form-defined world. Now, trying to find a way to express that and noticing how Dogen tried to express it, we have the oft used by us, by me, statement of Dogen, to To authenticate the myriad things by conveying the self to them is delusion. To authenticate, to allow everything to come forward and authenticate the self is enlightenment. To cultivate and authenticate Cultivate the myriad things and authenticate the myriad things by conveying the self to them is delusion.

[25:47]

That's kamadhatu. To allow the myriad things to come forward, for the myriad things to come forward and cultivate and authenticate the self is enlightenment. This is rupadhatu. And allow, I use the word allow. So, you know, my craft often has to be the medium of language. So I'm always bringing attention to language in using language. And I'm practicing with the presence of words in practice. discovering the bodily presence of words which engage the bodily presence of everything that appears.

[26:48]

So I say to accept, welcome, to accept. But now I'd say to allow, to accept and allow. The word allow is interesting and I, you know, I try to look at these words, take them out of their usual context. And allow means to approve, the etymology, to approve and to praise. To approve of what appears and to praise what appears. To know the wholeness of things. Wholeness comes from heal. To heal. to allow, to praise that which appears. So you can see that this engagement of interdependence does not happen through kamadhatu, but it can happen through this second jnana of rupadhatu to allow everything to come full.

[28:28]

That's why I keep asking you to, when you hit the bell, don't hit it with your mind. It's very hard not to hit it. You put your finger on the stick and you hit it. You want to use the sense of swing. You know, this is, it's in these details. Details, by the way, I like all these, is twigs. Detail, tail comes from tailor, to cut, and D is to cut into small parts. And tail comes from twig or twin or a fork. So sometimes I practice with twig after twig in the sense that, you know, you can't really engage attention within attention and within the medium of direct, the experience of direct experience, the direct experience of experience, unless your experience is articulated enough to engage attention. If discursive thinking is more articulated, your mind will just go to discursive thinking because it's more articulated, it's fun, and it represents the world as you're used to it, and it represents, represents the self and so forth.

[29:40]

So it's a big shift when attention finds twig after twig. Fully engaging. Twig after twig. And with twig after twig, you're close to the myriad holes, piercing the myriad holes. So maybe you can remember, work with the word swing to allow the stick to swing into the bell. Sophia swings all the time. She calculated the other day.

[30:41]

She likes mathematics. She calculated she's been swinging for one million hours. I'm just joking. But she did have some crazy calculation. I bet I've swung. And then she said, I bet I swing at least an hour and a half every day times seven times. And she does swing a lot. We have to swing. And we have to have the same type of arrangement for her in her room upstairs and in her room in Johanneshof. Because she's, you know, somehow she does it. I mean, she wants to do it. Her body wants to do it. And she can't swing unless she allows the swing to swing her. She has to allow the swing to swing her. If she tries to do it, it doesn't work very well. She has to cooperate with the swing. That's what's fun about swinging. So there's a swing. You allow the stick to swing into the bell instead of with your finger. This seems crazy, Liam, that I keep mentioning it.

[31:42]

But if you can't do it, if you have to put your mind into hitting the bell with your finger being the conveyor of the mind, that's conveying yourself to things and not allowing the bell to come forward and ring itself Yeah, it's like this. Entering into interdependence. Entering into how things actually exist. Finding the entry. Changing your habits. Until your habitation is interdependence. The manifold presence. He penetrated.

[32:50]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_90.61